23% increase in productivity thanks to synchronous technological innovation and improvement of management system

Participating in the Project of applying PMS model has helped Nam Ha Garment Joint Stock Company change a lot.

Nam Ha Garment Joint Stock Company is an export garment company, established in 2000. The main products are swimwear and knitted clothes, of which swimwear account for 80% of production value. Since its establishment, the Company has built a management system according to ISO 9001, ISO 14001, SA 8000. There are also other innovative tools such as 5S, TPM, Lean, KPI, Lean 6 Sigma, Kaizen.

Although the Company has experienced the application of different productivity and quality improvement models and tools, the results were not as satisfactory as expected. Realizing that improving productivity and quality is an activity that must be maintained regularly and continuously, therefore, when approaching the “Project of applying the overall model of productivity and quality improvement” of the Ministry of Industry and Trade , implemented by the Vietnam Productivity Institute, the Company decided to participate, in order to comprehensively improve the Company’s productivity and quality activities.

Stemming from the desire to reach a leading company in the field of swimwear production in Vietnam and what has not been achieved in the past 10 years of improvement, the Board of Directors of the Company said that it is necessary to build build a model to guide future productivity improvement efforts and form the basis for a sense of continuous improvement at the Company.

Skill training

In fact, at the Company, the skills of the workers are uneven, many workers depend entirely on electromechanical when a failure occurs. Mechatronics department is overloaded, takes time to review and repair, especially in the early days of the chain, does not focus on specialized work such as fault prevention research, make maintenance plans, conduct training, etc.

To overcome the above shortcomings, the implementations focused on: Preparing instructions to overcome common errors; regulations on maintenance, autonomy hygiene and training of workers to operate, maintain and overcome minor faults; get ready for cleaning tools, fixing errors.

As a result, 30 equipment operating instructions and equipment hygiene were established to train equipment workers. Workers carry out cleaning and inspection by themselves: Eliminate all dust on the machine, lubricate, tighten screws, clean and self-maintain simple steps for machines and equipment. Mechanical and electrical units are equipped with training skills The worker is in charge of simple repair work of the M&E Department.

Through training, workers know how to check, detect and remove stitches errors, calibrate equipment, they know how to identify needles, adjust thread, adjust thread, hold, adjust presser pressure and how to adjust which one is right.

Equipment must always be ready for use

Regarding the preparation of equipment ready to shorten the time to new product codes, the fact that according to customer requirements and the fashion characteristics of the product, the Company frequently has to change products, But changing products is usually slow, from 2 to 3 hours. After receiving the leaflets, the leader arranged the production line himself, resulting in different arrangement teams and optimal productivity.

Therefore, what needs to be done is to change the responsibility of spreading the line, design passes to the technician to select the optimal pass option, then transfer and guide the implementation teams. In addition, instead of experienced production line design, the Company invested in a production management software, used to design the optimal production line layout before entering a new product code. The company also developed operating instructions to support worker training, helping workers to perform some machine alignment operations, reduce technical support, etc.

After the solutions have been implemented, the time to change the item code has decreased from 2-3 hours/item code, to 30-60 minutes/item code, depending on the simplicity or complexity of the item code. Total conversion time reduced from 8 hours to 4 hours. After achieving the goal of quick conversion of product codes, a production preparation process was set up to standardize these activities.

Exploit intelligent suspension system

In early 2018, after researching modern production models, the Company decided to invest in a smart suspension system. However, this is a new technology, so the management team and workers are still not familiar with the suspension system, the percentage of new assembly stage is 40%, resulting in actual productivity not as expected. Therefore, the Company decided to develop guidelines for using the right suspension technique, retrain the leader on how to operate and operate the smart hanging chain and organize learning at the companies that have applied effective solutions.

Source: VNPI